This book examines both standard practice and ongoing controversies in social, medical, scientific, ethical, and philosophical approaches to ADHD. The complex web of concepts, data, needs, and ...
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This book examines both standard practice and ongoing controversies in social, medical, scientific, ethical, and philosophical approaches to ADHD. The complex web of concepts, data, needs, and attitudes is not fully unified. But, overall, the book argues, current approaches to research and care accidentally reinforce intolerance of ADHD-diagnosed people, and simultaneously slow down growth in knowledge. To avoid these outcomes, the wide range of people involved with ADHD—including clinicians, scientists, educators, parents, policy-makers, and diagnosed individuals—need to jointly re-examine and change the attitudes, concepts, and practices typically taken toward ADHD. The book demonstrates how we derived our current medical, scientific, and social concepts of ADHD, shows why the concepts we now use are optional, and explains that we need change for both ethical and epistemic reasons. Ethically, we need new approaches because our current concepts and practices, which center on DSM-defined ADHD, dichotomization of “ADHD” from “non-ADHD,” and intervening on individuals rather than society, embed values that reflect and reinforce intolerance. Epistemically, opposition to alternatives has created a relative stasis in our understanding of ADHD. The book argues that any change will need to recognize the centrality of both facts and values to improved scientific, medical, and social approaches to ADHD. Shared goals of increasing knowledge, providing new options for diagnosed people, and decreasing stigmatization will drive the much-needed change; adopting inclusive, responsive decision making in all areas of practice will foster it.Less

Accidental Intolerance : How We Stigmatize ADHD and How We Can Stop

Susan C. C. Hawthorne

Published in print: 2013-10-14

This book examines both standard practice and ongoing controversies in social, medical, scientific, ethical, and philosophical approaches to ADHD. The complex web of concepts, data, needs, and attitudes is not fully unified. But, overall, the book argues, current approaches to research and care accidentally reinforce intolerance of ADHD-diagnosed people, and simultaneously slow down growth in knowledge. To avoid these outcomes, the wide range of people involved with ADHD—including clinicians, scientists, educators, parents, policy-makers, and diagnosed individuals—need to jointly re-examine and change the attitudes, concepts, and practices typically taken toward ADHD. The book demonstrates how we derived our current medical, scientific, and social concepts of ADHD, shows why the concepts we now use are optional, and explains that we need change for both ethical and epistemic reasons. Ethically, we need new approaches because our current concepts and practices, which center on DSM-defined ADHD, dichotomization of “ADHD” from “non-ADHD,” and intervening on individuals rather than society, embed values that reflect and reinforce intolerance. Epistemically, opposition to alternatives has created a relative stasis in our understanding of ADHD. The book argues that any change will need to recognize the centrality of both facts and values to improved scientific, medical, and social approaches to ADHD. Shared goals of increasing knowledge, providing new options for diagnosed people, and decreasing stigmatization will drive the much-needed change; adopting inclusive, responsive decision making in all areas of practice will foster it.

Where do new ideas come from? What is social intelligence? Why do social scientists perform mindless statistical rituals? This vital book is about rethinking rationality as adaptive thinking: to ...
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Where do new ideas come from? What is social intelligence? Why do social scientists perform mindless statistical rituals? This vital book is about rethinking rationality as adaptive thinking: to understand how minds cope with their environments, both ecological and social. The author proposes and illustrates a bold new research program that investigates the psychology of rationality, introducing the concepts of ecological, bounded, and social rationality. His path-breaking collection takes research on thinking, social intelligence, creativity, and decision-making out of an ethereal world where the laws of logic and probability reign, and places it into our real world of human behavior and interaction. This book is accessibly written for general readers with an interest in psychology, cognitive science, economics, sociology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and animal behavior. It also teaches a practical audience, such as physicians, AIDS counselors, and experts in criminal law, how to understand and communicate uncertainties and risks.Less

Adaptive Thinking : Rationality in the Real World

Gerd Gigerenzer

Published in print: 2002-03-28

Where do new ideas come from? What is social intelligence? Why do social scientists perform mindless statistical rituals? This vital book is about rethinking rationality as adaptive thinking: to understand how minds cope with their environments, both ecological and social. The author proposes and illustrates a bold new research program that investigates the psychology of rationality, introducing the concepts of ecological, bounded, and social rationality. His path-breaking collection takes research on thinking, social intelligence, creativity, and decision-making out of an ethereal world where the laws of logic and probability reign, and places it into our real world of human behavior and interaction. This book is accessibly written for general readers with an interest in psychology, cognitive science, economics, sociology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and animal behavior. It also teaches a practical audience, such as physicians, AIDS counselors, and experts in criminal law, how to understand and communicate uncertainties and risks.

The book proposes a contemporary framework for critiquing Advaita and formulating its basic thesis in a more logical and convincing way. Any proper theory in philosophy and science has to follow from ...
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The book proposes a contemporary framework for critiquing Advaita and formulating its basic thesis in a more logical and convincing way. Any proper theory in philosophy and science has to follow from accepted assumptions. Hence the book begins by identifying basic presuppositions required for Advaita and determining the different cognitive possibilities arising out of them. After thus determining what is logically and conceptually possible and impossible in Advaita, the new framework is used to assess whether or not the traditionally held Advaitic concepts and theories are satisfactory and acceptable. This is done in many chapters covering discussions of the notions of not-Self (anātman), cosmic ignorance (māyā), individual ignorance (avidyā), illusoriness (mithyātva), sublation (bādha), entities that are different from the real and the unreal (sadasadvilaksana) and so on. The book argues that all these concepts, as specifically formulated and defended in traditional Advaita for centuries after Śankara, are simply faulty and untenable both individually and as related clusters of concepts. Traditional Advaita has also defended an elaborate ontology of experiences like mistaking a rope-for a snake. It has also heavily defended the metaphysical thesis of the empirical world of our experience being a total illusion. The logical faults and conceptual inadequacies of this ontology and metaphysics are also discussed in great detail, offering absolutely new criticisms of them. Despite this almost totally negative portrayal of traditional Advaita, the book is also quite positive in showing that any belief in non-duality is still very much philosophically possible and also necessary.Less

Advaita : A Contemporary Critique

Srinivasa Rao

Published in print: 2011-10-24

The book proposes a contemporary framework for critiquing Advaita and formulating its basic thesis in a more logical and convincing way. Any proper theory in philosophy and science has to follow from accepted assumptions. Hence the book begins by identifying basic presuppositions required for Advaita and determining the different cognitive possibilities arising out of them. After thus determining what is logically and conceptually possible and impossible in Advaita, the new framework is used to assess whether or not the traditionally held Advaitic concepts and theories are satisfactory and acceptable. This is done in many chapters covering discussions of the notions of not-Self (anātman), cosmic ignorance (māyā), individual ignorance (avidyā), illusoriness (mithyātva), sublation (bādha), entities that are different from the real and the unreal (sadasadvilaksana) and so on. The book argues that all these concepts, as specifically formulated and defended in traditional Advaita for centuries after Śankara, are simply faulty and untenable both individually and as related clusters of concepts. Traditional Advaita has also defended an elaborate ontology of experiences like mistaking a rope-for a snake. It has also heavily defended the metaphysical thesis of the empirical world of our experience being a total illusion. The logical faults and conceptual inadequacies of this ontology and metaphysics are also discussed in great detail, offering absolutely new criticisms of them. Despite this almost totally negative portrayal of traditional Advaita, the book is also quite positive in showing that any belief in non-duality is still very much philosophically possible and also necessary.

The book contains a selection of essays on aesthetics, some of which have been revised or added to. A number of the essays are aimed at the abstract heart of aesthetics, attempting to solve a cluster ...
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The book contains a selection of essays on aesthetics, some of which have been revised or added to. A number of the essays are aimed at the abstract heart of aesthetics, attempting to solve a cluster of the most important issues in aesthetics which are not specific to particular art forms. These include the nature and proper scope of the aesthetic, the intersubjective validity of aesthetic judgements, the correct understanding of aesthetic judgements expressed through metaphors, aesthetic realism versus anti-realism, the character of aesthetic pleasure and aesthetic value, the aim of art, and the artistic expression of emotion. Others are focussed on central issues in the aesthetics of particular art forms: two engage with the most fundamental issue in the aesthetics of music, the question of the correct conception of the phenomenology of the experience of listening to music with understanding; and two consider the nature of pictorial representation, one examining the well-known views of Ernst Gombich, Richard Wollheim, and Kendall Walton, the other articulating an alternative conception of seeing a picture as a depiction of a certain state of affairs. The final essay in the book is a comprehensive reconstruction and critical examination of Wittgenstein's aesthetics, both early and late.Less

Aesthetic Essays

Malcolm Budd

Published in print: 2008-11-06

The book contains a selection of essays on aesthetics, some of which have been revised or added to. A number of the essays are aimed at the abstract heart of aesthetics, attempting to solve a cluster of the most important issues in aesthetics which are not specific to particular art forms. These include the nature and proper scope of the aesthetic, the intersubjective validity of aesthetic judgements, the correct understanding of aesthetic judgements expressed through metaphors, aesthetic realism versus anti-realism, the character of aesthetic pleasure and aesthetic value, the aim of art, and the artistic expression of emotion. Others are focussed on central issues in the aesthetics of particular art forms: two engage with the most fundamental issue in the aesthetics of music, the question of the correct conception of the phenomenology of the experience of listening to music with understanding; and two consider the nature of pictorial representation, one examining the well-known views of Ernst Gombich, Richard Wollheim, and Kendall Walton, the other articulating an alternative conception of seeing a picture as a depiction of a certain state of affairs. The final essay in the book is a comprehensive reconstruction and critical examination of Wittgenstein's aesthetics, both early and late.

This book offers the first full treatment of design in the field of philosophical aesthetics. Aesthetic theory has traditionally occupied itself with fine art in all its forms, sometimes with craft, ...
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This book offers the first full treatment of design in the field of philosophical aesthetics. Aesthetic theory has traditionally occupied itself with fine art in all its forms, sometimes with craft, and often with notions of beauty and sublimity in art and nature. In so doing, it has largely ignored the quotidian and familiar objects and experiences that make up our daily lives. Yet how we interact with design involves aesthetic choices and judgements as well as practical, cognitive and moral considerations. This work challenges the discipline to broaden its scope to include design, and illustrates how aesthetics helps define our human concerns. Subjecting design to as rigorous a treatment as any other aesthetic object exposes it to three main challenges that form the core of this book. First, design must be distinguished from art and craft as a unique kind of object meriting separate philosophical attention, and is here defined in part by its functional qualities. Second, the experience of design must be defended as having a particularly aesthetic nature. Here Forsey adapts the Kantian notion of dependent beauty to provide a model for our appreciation of design as different from our judgments of art, craft and natural beauty. Finally, design is important for aesthetics and philosophy as a whole in that it is implicated in broader human concerns. Forsey situates her theory of design as a constructive contribution to the recent movement of Everyday Aesthetics, which seeks to re-enfranchise philosophical aesthetics as an important part of philosophy at large.Less

The Aesthetics of Design

Jane Forsey

Published in print: 2013-01-16

This book offers the first full treatment of design in the field of philosophical aesthetics. Aesthetic theory has traditionally occupied itself with fine art in all its forms, sometimes with craft, and often with notions of beauty and sublimity in art and nature. In so doing, it has largely ignored the quotidian and familiar objects and experiences that make up our daily lives. Yet how we interact with design involves aesthetic choices and judgements as well as practical, cognitive and moral considerations. This work challenges the discipline to broaden its scope to include design, and illustrates how aesthetics helps define our human concerns. Subjecting design to as rigorous a treatment as any other aesthetic object exposes it to three main challenges that form the core of this book. First, design must be distinguished from art and craft as a unique kind of object meriting separate philosophical attention, and is here defined in part by its functional qualities. Second, the experience of design must be defended as having a particularly aesthetic nature. Here Forsey adapts the Kantian notion of dependent beauty to provide a model for our appreciation of design as different from our judgments of art, craft and natural beauty. Finally, design is important for aesthetics and philosophy as a whole in that it is implicated in broader human concerns. Forsey situates her theory of design as a constructive contribution to the recent movement of Everyday Aesthetics, which seeks to re-enfranchise philosophical aesthetics as an important part of philosophy at large.

The chapters of this book, which are by liberal and feminist philosophers, address whether marriage reform ought to stop with same-sex marriage. Some philosophers have recently argued that marriage ...
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The chapters of this book, which are by liberal and feminist philosophers, address whether marriage reform ought to stop with same-sex marriage. Some philosophers have recently argued that marriage is illiberal and should be abolished or radically reformed to include groups and friendships. In response, Chapter 1 argues that marriage law can be justified without illiberal appeal to an ideal relationship type, and Chapter 2 argues that the liberal values justifying same-sex marriage do not justify further extension. Other chapters argue for new legal forms for intimate relationships. Chapter 3 argues that piecemeal directives rather than relationship contracts should replace marriage, and Chapter 4 argues for separating marriage and parenting, with parenting rather than marriage becoming the family’s foundation. The fifth chapter argues for a non-hierarchical friendship model for marriage. The next one argues that polygamy should be decriminalized but that the liberal state need not recognize it, while Chapter 7 argues that polygamy could be legally structured to protect privacy and equality. The eighth chapter argues for temporary marriage as a legal option, while the chapter that follows argues that marital commitments are problematic instruments for securing romantic love. These essays challenge contemporary understandings of marriage and the state’s role in it.Less

After Marriage : Rethinking Marital Relationships

Published in print: 2016-01-04

The chapters of this book, which are by liberal and feminist philosophers, address whether marriage reform ought to stop with same-sex marriage. Some philosophers have recently argued that marriage is illiberal and should be abolished or radically reformed to include groups and friendships. In response, Chapter 1 argues that marriage law can be justified without illiberal appeal to an ideal relationship type, and Chapter 2 argues that the liberal values justifying same-sex marriage do not justify further extension. Other chapters argue for new legal forms for intimate relationships. Chapter 3 argues that piecemeal directives rather than relationship contracts should replace marriage, and Chapter 4 argues for separating marriage and parenting, with parenting rather than marriage becoming the family’s foundation. The fifth chapter argues for a non-hierarchical friendship model for marriage. The next one argues that polygamy should be decriminalized but that the liberal state need not recognize it, while Chapter 7 argues that polygamy could be legally structured to protect privacy and equality. The eighth chapter argues for temporary marriage as a legal option, while the chapter that follows argues that marital commitments are problematic instruments for securing romantic love. These essays challenge contemporary understandings of marriage and the state’s role in it.

All developed human beings possess a practical mastery of a vast range of concepts, including such basic structural notions as those of identity, truth, existence, material objects, mental states, ...
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All developed human beings possess a practical mastery of a vast range of concepts, including such basic structural notions as those of identity, truth, existence, material objects, mental states, space, and time; but a practical mastery does not entail theoretical understanding. It is that understanding which philosophy seeks to achieve. This book sets out to explain and illustrate a certain conception of the nature of analytical philosophy. The author draws on his many years of teaching at Oxford University, during which he refined and developed his route to understanding the fundamental structure of human thinking. Among the distinctive features of his exposition are the displacement of an older, reductive conception of philosophical method (the ideal of ‘analysing’ complex ideas into simpler elements) in favour of elucidating the interconnections between the complex but irreducible notions which form the basic structure of our thinking; and the demonstration that the three traditionally distinguished departments of metaphysics (ontology), epistemology, and logic are but three aspects of one unified enquiry.Less

Analysis and Metaphysics : An Introduction to Philosophy

P. F. Strawson

Published in print: 1992-04-16

All developed human beings possess a practical mastery of a vast range of concepts, including such basic structural notions as those of identity, truth, existence, material objects, mental states, space, and time; but a practical mastery does not entail theoretical understanding. It is that understanding which philosophy seeks to achieve. This book sets out to explain and illustrate a certain conception of the nature of analytical philosophy. The author draws on his many years of teaching at Oxford University, during which he refined and developed his route to understanding the fundamental structure of human thinking. Among the distinctive features of his exposition are the displacement of an older, reductive conception of philosophical method (the ideal of ‘analysing’ complex ideas into simpler elements) in favour of elucidating the interconnections between the complex but irreducible notions which form the basic structure of our thinking; and the demonstration that the three traditionally distinguished departments of metaphysics (ontology), epistemology, and logic are but three aspects of one unified enquiry.

Anselm is the first Christian philosopher to defend a libertarian analysis of created freedom. In doing so he proposes viable answers to perennial questions in the philosophy of religion: If God ...
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Anselm is the first Christian philosopher to defend a libertarian analysis of created freedom. In doing so he proposes viable answers to perennial questions in the philosophy of religion: If God causes everything, does He also cause human choices, including the choice to sin? Can grace and human free will be reconciled? Can free human choices be divinely foreknown? Does divine freedom entail the choice to do other than the best, and to make a different world, or no world at all?Less

Anselm on Freedom

Katherin Rogers

Published in print: 2008-06-19

Anselm is the first Christian philosopher to defend a libertarian analysis of created freedom. In doing so he proposes viable answers to perennial questions in the philosophy of religion: If God causes everything, does He also cause human choices, including the choice to sin? Can grace and human free will be reconciled? Can free human choices be divinely foreknown? Does divine freedom entail the choice to do other than the best, and to make a different world, or no world at all?

Descartes’ Meditations is a search after truth in the sense that it contains arguments for a view about the ultimate nature of reality, but it is also a search after truth in that it captures the ...
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Descartes’ Meditations is a search after truth in the sense that it contains arguments for a view about the ultimate nature of reality, but it is also a search after truth in that it captures the difficult and error-ridden struggle of a thinker (the meditator) who is moving from an extremely confused representation of reality to a view that is accurate but unexpected. Every single claim of the Meditations is advanced from the first-person point of view of Descartes’ struggling meditator, and so most of the Meditations is confused. At the start of inquiry, and as inquiry unfolds, the meditator will put forward claims that he takes to be true, but in most cases these claims do not have anything going for them but their longevity, and they are to be rejected. For example, the meditator will put forward claims about what is possible, but without having arrived at clear and obvious axioms (the primary notions of metaphysics) that entail that God is the author of what is possible, and without having considered which possibilities God has or has not authored. The meditator will get clear about some of these axioms as inquiry unfolds, and as a result he will recognize many of the claims that he put forward initially as confused and provincial, though he will continue to assert any confusions that are not emended. The Meditations does not draw out all of the implications of the primary notions of metaphysics; at the end of the Meditations the meditator is not a full-blown Cartesian, and a number of Cartesian theses (e.g., necessitarianism) are generated only with further reflection. Finally, the Meditations is written for reception by a variety of minds, so that readers from a number of backgrounds and confusions would be able to start from their first-person epistemic position and move in the direction of truth. Descartes is of course interested in locating ideas that are an accurate representation of reality, but he is also interested in pedagogy and the rhetoric of inquiry, or else communication would be for nought. He employs the analytic method to help his readers to move from and beyond a faulty paradigm.Less

Argument and Persuasion in Descartes’ Meditations

David Cunning

Published in print: 2010-06-21

Descartes’ Meditations is a search after truth in the sense that it contains arguments for a view about the ultimate nature of reality, but it is also a search after truth in that it captures the difficult and error-ridden struggle of a thinker (the meditator) who is moving from an extremely confused representation of reality to a view that is accurate but unexpected. Every single claim of the Meditations is advanced from the first-person point of view of Descartes’ struggling meditator, and so most of the Meditations is confused. At the start of inquiry, and as inquiry unfolds, the meditator will put forward claims that he takes to be true, but in most cases these claims do not have anything going for them but their longevity, and they are to be rejected. For example, the meditator will put forward claims about what is possible, but without having arrived at clear and obvious axioms (the primary notions of metaphysics) that entail that God is the author of what is possible, and without having considered which possibilities God has or has not authored. The meditator will get clear about some of these axioms as inquiry unfolds, and as a result he will recognize many of the claims that he put forward initially as confused and provincial, though he will continue to assert any confusions that are not emended. The Meditations does not draw out all of the implications of the primary notions of metaphysics; at the end of the Meditations the meditator is not a full-blown Cartesian, and a number of Cartesian theses (e.g., necessitarianism) are generated only with further reflection. Finally, the Meditations is written for reception by a variety of minds, so that readers from a number of backgrounds and confusions would be able to start from their first-person epistemic position and move in the direction of truth. Descartes is of course interested in locating ideas that are an accurate representation of reality, but he is also interested in pedagogy and the rhetoric of inquiry, or else communication would be for nought. He employs the analytic method to help his readers to move from and beyond a faulty paradigm.

Art changes the totality of human experience as Dewey emphasized. Goodman and Heidegger propose that art reveals a special contribution to the world-making experience of the artist and the receivers ...
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Art changes the totality of human experience as Dewey emphasized. Goodman and Heidegger propose that art reveals a special contribution to the world-making experience of the artist and the receivers of the artwork. Art is often representational. It may, as Bell and Fry affirmed, contain significant form giving rise to a special emotion, it may be expressive of human feelings, as Croce and Collingwood averred. It may deconstruct previous artworks, removing them from their frames to assemble something new, as Derrida suggests. Some art does each, and I seek to explain how. But not all art does these things, and not only art does them. So what is the special contribution that art makes to experience that changes human life? Art uses sensory consciousness as the focus of attention to create new form and content out of exemplars of experience. The exemplars mark a new distinction in conceptual space. I call this exemplarization. We value art because of the new content it offers us in our lives. We are provoked by art to ask ourselves whether to transfer the content of the artwork to our world and ourselves beyond the artwork. Our answer reveals to us what we are like as we exercise our freedom and autonomy in how we represent our world. Art is that part of experience that uses experience to change the content of experience. Exemplar representation, exemplarization, unifies the aesthetic, creating a new understanding of our selves and our world.Less

Art, Self and Knowledge

Keith Lehrer

Published in print: 2011-11-16

Art changes the totality of human experience as Dewey emphasized. Goodman and Heidegger propose that art reveals a special contribution to the world-making experience of the artist and the receivers of the artwork. Art is often representational. It may, as Bell and Fry affirmed, contain significant form giving rise to a special emotion, it may be expressive of human feelings, as Croce and Collingwood averred. It may deconstruct previous artworks, removing them from their frames to assemble something new, as Derrida suggests. Some art does each, and I seek to explain how. But not all art does these things, and not only art does them. So what is the special contribution that art makes to experience that changes human life? Art uses sensory consciousness as the focus of attention to create new form and content out of exemplars of experience. The exemplars mark a new distinction in conceptual space. I call this exemplarization. We value art because of the new content it offers us in our lives. We are provoked by art to ask ourselves whether to transfer the content of the artwork to our world and ourselves beyond the artwork. Our answer reveals to us what we are like as we exercise our freedom and autonomy in how we represent our world. Art is that part of experience that uses experience to change the content of experience. Exemplar representation, exemplarization, unifies the aesthetic, creating a new understanding of our selves and our world.

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